SAC certification prep — which domains are weighted heaviest on the exam?
I've got my System Administration Certification exam scheduled 6 weeks out and I'm trying to figure out where to put most of my study time. The official exam outline lists several domains but doesn't give percentage breakdowns, which makes it hard to prioritize.
From what I've gathered talking to people who've already taken it, the networking and security configuration sections come up more than storage or virtualization topics. I've been a Linux sysadmin for 3 years so the CLI stuff feels comfortable, but I'm shakier on the enterprise security compliance questions.
Right now I'm doing about 2 hours of study daily and taking one practice section per week. I've been at it for 2 weeks and I'm hitting around 68% on practice tests, which I know isn't passing territory yet. I'd feel better at 80% before I sit the real exam.
Anyone who's taken the SAC recently — did you feel the practice materials were representative of the actual exam difficulty? I'm finding some practice sets feel way easier than others and I can't tell if that's just variance or if certain providers are better calibrated.
Scripting questions caught me off guard — I expected more conceptual content but there were several where they showed a bash or PowerShell snippet and asked what it does or what's wrong with it.
The security and access control domain was definitely weighted heavily when I took it. I'd say at least 25-30% of the questions touched on authentication, permissions, or audit logging in some form.
68% after 2 weeks is fine. I was at 71% with 2 weeks left and ended up passing with an 82%. The last week of focused review on weak spots made a bigger difference than the preceding month.
For enterprise security questions, make sure you know the difference between role-based and attribute-based access control inside out. That distinction showed up in multiple questions phrased slightly differently each time.
Failed my first attempt and honestly it was a wake-up call. I'd spent way too much time on the basic concepts and not nearly enough on security hardening and access controls. Those two areas hammered me. The monitoring and alerting domain wasn't as heavy as I expected, so I'd deprioritize that if you're crunched for time.
Second time around I focused almost entirely on hardening procedures and user/group permissions, and I passed with room to spare. It's not that the other domains don't matter, they do, but if you've only got six weeks you want to go deep on access controls first. Practice the scenarios, not just the theory. That's what tripped me up the first time.